Put on your fur and pearls and dine out at Metropolis Eating House – a French fusion restaurant in the former Metropolis House Ballroom. Entry is via a magnificent sweeping staircase and, inside the restaurant, mirrors and red and gold wallpaper line a room that can only be described as vast. Chef Gabriel Martin, having left his Essendon home Maisonette, has done his best to give this enormous venue an intimate feel, with sofas for a pre-dinner kir royale, banquette seating, bijou tables and a bar.

The octagonal dancefloor and two stained-glass skylights are largely as they were in the 1950s, when debutantes no doubt mopped the stains of less delicious food off their party dresses. Everyone speaks French here, but the dishes skate around the world – five-spice quail with scallops, salmon with nori skin and white asparagus, yabbies and sweetbread, a red curry prawn and pork sausage roll. Martin’s enthusiasm for flavour is occasionally misguided but mostly inspired, and totally, utterly infectious.